Psychotherapeutic care for people with intellectual disabilities is inadequate in the city and district of Munich. Experts complained about this last week at the 30th Music Therapy Conference of the Free Music Center Munich in Haidhausen. Conventional psychotherapy requires patients to be able to describe their condition in words. People with severe disabilities and mental illnesses who speak differently or who do not speak can not be adequately treated in verbal therapy. There is hope in music therapy, but it is rarely offered.
The speakers at the conference emphasized the possibility of enabling these patients to develop a therapeutic relationship. Corinna Bonaccurso, senior physician at the specialist ward for people with intellectual disabilities at the Isar-Amper-Klinikum in Haar, described music therapy as “indispensable” in this context. So far, however, there has been a lack of specialized outpatient psychotherapy places for non-speaking patients and people with intellectual disabilities in town and country, stated the specialist in pediatric and adolescent medicine Andreas Sprinz. The “catastrophic psychotherapeutic supply situation” is already known to the associations of statutory health insurance physicians.
Frauke Schwaiblmair, inclusion officer for the district of Upper Bavaria from Gräfelfing, criticized in particular the long waiting times for psychotherapeutic inpatient treatment places and the lack of outpatient follow-up care after inpatient stays for these patients. The medical and psychotherapeutic chambers would not do justice to their duty to care for people with intellectual disabilities, said Schwaiblmair. “The qualified music therapists could help close the gaps in the German health system,” said Lutz Neugebauer, Chairman of the Board of the German Music Therapy Society, and appealed: “Health politicians must not forget people with intellectual disabilities and without speech.”